MediaUseCasesForWebIdentity

(Metadata)

Editors

Motivating Factors

It is becoming more and more apparent that interest in identity mechanisms is growing, as demonstrated by the two breakout sessions planned for WebID on the plenary day.

Authors are interested in how WebID is evolving and how federated services through new mechanisms such as the collaboration of WebID and OpenID will improve existing identity eco-systems, which are currently key factors in creating services on the Web that provide premium media content and good user features such as personalization and recommendation.

On top of that, smart phones are bringing new thought-provoking concepts, for example 'multiple persona'. The authors are interested in the concept of multiple persona as it relates to the division of a user's interest in media content and their overly-complicated online life due to the Web.

On the other hand, premium content providers and distributors have been making good use of other kinds of identities. Two examples of such identities are 1) identities provided by infrastructures such as telecommunications and broadcasting, and 2) identities provided by devices containing chips with built-in IDs.

As WebID is a key factor, the authors would like to find their way through what is essentially, from a broadcaster's point of view, a chaotic collection of cutting edge technologies in identity eco-system. This can be done by checking them against practical business use cases.

Authors would like to find out how and with whom they can work collaboratively in W3C on 'identity and media content'. (Web and Broadcasting BG is a relevant space to talk about these business use cases, but not a relevant space in which to write specifications.)

For that purpose, examples of two points of view and one business use case are included below by the authors, who hope these will be a good starting point for discussion.

The Two Key Issues

There is a variety of IDs in play in the premium content eco-system such as ID for identifying individuals, terminal IDs and system-related IDs used for selling and buying media content. The issue is how we relate these heterogeneous IDs.

The sale and purchase of premium media content is conducted not only via telecommunications but also via broadcasting. Of course, each method has its own ID. The question is how we should bind these IDs to maximize user experience on connected TVs.

The Business Use Case

'Non-connected TV' to 'Connected TV' Scenario

A user has a TV. The TV is not yet connected to the Web; it is a 'Non-connected TV'.

The user subscribes to a media content service: the service provider (provider) gets the user's identity (internal-id), somehow. The provider binds the internal-id with the TV's device ID.

From the provider, the user purchases a license to watch a media content or a channel on the TV. The TV keeps the license information.

The user connects the TV to the Web. The TV is now a 'Connected TV'.

The user binds the device ID with the user's web identity (web-id), easily.

Now the provider can bind the internal-id with the web-id automatically, thanks to the previous step. Consequently, the license information is bound to the web-id as well. The user can enjoy the provider's services on the web as a licensed user.

This mechanism enables the user to watch the licensed content on all devices the user owns.